I've Been Thunderstruck

The concept of the square root has been in existance for many thousands of years. Exactly how it was discovered is unknown, but several different methods of exacting square roots were used by early mathematicians. Babylonian clay tablets from 1900 to 1600 BCE contain the squares and cubes of integers 1-30. The early Egyptians used square roots around 1700 BCE, and during the Greek Classical Period (600-300 BCE) better arithmetic methods improved square root operations. The 16th century, French mathematician Rene Descartes was the first to use the square root symbol.